higher education

Wyoming Catholic College in Lander is now a candidate for accreditation as a higher education institution, a status the small liberal arts college has been working towards for years.

Full accreditation is expected by 2018. College President Kevin Roberts says candidacy will bring a host of privileges to the 8-year-old school. The biggest is that college credits will now transfer to graduate programs—which has been a problem for some of the school’s past graduates.

Student enrollment at the University of Wyoming has increased slightly over the past year, according to data released this week. On its Laramie campus, enrollment grew by about one percent—or 109 students—to more than 10,500.

UW’s Vice President for Student Affairs Sara Axelson says the slight growth is the result of boosted recruitment efforts.

Students at Westwood High School—an alternative school in Gillette—are starting out the new school year in a brand new building. That means more space and state-of-the-art technology—but perhaps most important—a new location. That’s because Westwood, where most students don’t see themselves as college-bound, put up its new school building smack dab on a college campus.

Robert Sheetz spent five years in the U.S. Navy, working on a flight deck, fixing fighter jets. When he got out, the Colorado native came to Wyoming—to put his GI Bill benefit toward an anthropology degree.

“I was a 23-year-old freshman coming into the University of Wyoming, coming from an area where I had a huge structure system around me from being in the military,” Sheetz said. “So I had to kind of learn to build that system for myself and figure out how to be a college student after not being in school for five years.”

Last month, Bob Sternberg took over as the new president of the University of Wyoming. In recent weeks, has explained that he wants UW to attempt to be an inclusive University that doesn’t focus on things like a student’s ACT scores, and rather looks more at the whole package.

President Sternberg tells Wyoming Public Radio’s Bob Beck that it’s more important to make sure students are properly prepared for higher education, and their future is much more important than test scores.